Percy Bysshe (say "Bish") Shelley

"The literature of England," wrote Shelley in A Defence of Poetry, "has arisen as it were from a new birth … we live among such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who have appeared since the last national struggle for civil and religious liberty" (Keats-Shelley House).

I. Essential Questions

• Why are the Romantics a good lesson in the maxim "ideas have consequences"?
• How do style and sense relate to one another in well-crafted literature? 

II. Background 
Take Basic Notes on Percy Bysshe Shelley From the Columbia University Encyclopedia

• Years
• Intellectual and Literary Themes
• Marriage and Other Elements of Interest

III. Reading

• "To Wordsworth"
• A Song: "Men of England"
• "Ozymandias"
• "England in 1819"

IV. Journal: Shelley

• Reread "Ozymandias" 
• 1.  Identify and explain three key elements that support the thematic meaning of this poem. 

V. Further Thoughts

• "The Necessity of Atheism"
• How Freeing was Free Love For Her?

Shelley's body was found washed up on the shores of western Italy.  His body was burned, but it is said that his heart was delivered to his wife...who is said to have kept a piece of it wrapped in a poem he wrote concerning Keats. An Italian fisherman, on his deathbed, claimed that he had rammed the boat Shelley was on to rob the men on board...but it sank too quickly.